Just in case a 16-move draw didn't satisfy your desire to see some big-time chess, there's a major event underway in Warsaw: the European Team Chess Championship. Unlike the European Club Cup, the players here represent their own countries (or at least the countries whose federations they play for); that makes it interesting not only as a competition featuring individuals but from a team perspective too.

After two rounds five teams have perfect 2-0 match scores: Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Greece (of course), Turkey and France. Amazingly, the Turks defeated the Russians in round 2, 2.5-1.5, despite fielding four players rated from 2565 to 2625 against a team whose lowest board was Dmitry Andreikin, World Championship Candidate. Three games were drawn and Dragan Solak beat Alexander Grischuk (#4 in the world prior to the game). It's just unbelievable how often the Russians have failed to come through as the top seed in the team competitions over the past decade or so. "Of course"-ing aside, Greece's 3-1 victory over the English in round 2 was also very surprising.

Round 2 also saw an interesting individual clash between two candidates, Mamedyarov and Topalov. Topalov won with Black in 32 moves, but the final position as given on the live games page is only slightly better for Black. Does anyone know if the DGT board simply got messed up by pieces flying around, or if Mamedyarov ran out of time? Another possibility is some sort of touch-move error that led to resignation without bothering to execute the move in full.

Seven rounds remain, so if Carlsen and Anand don't manage to entertain us over the next few days we've got an alternative.

Reader Comments (4)

Dennis, don't you think the final position in Mamedyarov- Topalov is hopess for white even though the computer shows only a slight advantage? Black can exchange the queens at will, or even better force white to exchange, and white seems to be completely tied in the resulting rook endgame. I thought Mamedyarov was just disgusted at his position and didn't see the point of prolonging the game.

[DM: You might be right. White can resist a while, but he's so tied down that it may be a hopeless cause. I'm not sure I'd resign just yet, but between the probably lost rook ending and attacking ideas with ...g5 (maybe with ...f6 first) and ...h4 White may be busted either way. Good comment, whoever you are!]

The text live commentary at the tournament homepage (might be by IM Stanislaw Zawadzki who commented on other chess events in Poland such as European Rapid/Blitz, always held in Warsaw) says "It is hard to explain why Mamedyarov resigned. Topalov was better but still a lot of work to do for him.". So Mamedyarov didn't lose on time, and the game score is complete.

There was already a candidates clash (Topalov-Aronian) in round 1, finishing with a correct draw after a little but not too much excitement. With pairings based on team seedings, this occurred because Bulgaria is relatively weak on the other three boards (nor Cheparinov, no Georgiev). Today's top individual clash is Grischuk-Adams, part of a match between two countries that often underperform in team competitions (yesterday England lost 1-3 against mighty Greece).

I can confirm that the game ended here. The only thing we can blame DGT board or software for is registering final result as 1-0, so I went directly to the board, to ensure this was a final position and it was white who had resigned.

A riddle for DGT fans: in one game white king was at f2, black pawns at e4 and f3, the rest is unimportant. White played Kg3 and black resigned, so kings were put at e4 and d5. What DGT software made out of it?